History YMMV / ANewHope

* MemeticLoser: Greedo, after Creator/GeorgeLucas edited his scene so that he shoots but misses Han Solo at point-blank range. Even Franchise/{{LEGO}} got in on the fun with a FunnyBackgroundEvent in ''Revenge of the Brick'' wherein Greedo repeatedly fails to hit a dartboard positioned only a few inches away from him.

** There is a persistent belief among fans that Lucas broke a Director's Guild of America rule by not including opening credits for the film (believing that they would disrupt the excitement of the opening), but that the DGA did not consider him big enough to bother going after, as ''Star Wars'' was not expected to be anything more than an unremarkable B-movie, so they let it slide... until a then-much-more-famous Lucas did it again in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', whereupon the DGA fined him $250,000, leading to him ultimately leaving the DGA altogether. In reality, Lucas did not break any rules by not including opening credits in ''A New Hope'', and numerous other movies have - and had - foregone them as well without controversy (''Film/CitizenKane'' and ''Film/WestSideStory1961'' are two of the more well known examples). However, the DGA ''did' have a rule that stipulated that any film that included a credit in the film's opening (including a recognizable part of a name) had to also credit the director in the same sequence. Unfortunately for Lucas, he included a splash card after the 20th Century Fox logo for each movie that included the phrase, "A Lucasfilm Limited Production". Since "Lucasfilm" contained Lucas's name, that would trigger the DGA rule. It didn't apply to ''A New Hope'', since Lucas ''was'' the director, but in ''Empire'', Lucas opted to hand the director's chair over to Irvin Kirshner, resulting in the mandatory credit rule coming into effect. Since Kirshner wasn't credited and hadn't officially waived his right to be credited, Lucas got hit with the fine, resulting in him resigning the DGA out of annoyance at the ruling.

** At the time, it was ''intensely'' controversial that there were no traditional opening credits. To wit--the only film that dared to save all the credits for the end was ''Film/CitizenKane'', which was made under a blanket AuteurLicense. The Directors Guild of America let it slide for Creator/GeorgeLucas only because they assumed the film was going to bomb and be quickly forgotten. [[AndYouThoughtItWouldFail It obviously didn't]], but when Lucas did it again for ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', the DGA issued Lucas a $250,000 fine that he paid before leaving the DGA altogether. Today, many filmmakers forgo traditional opening credits, or even opening titles, that now, the [=DGA=]'s insistence that artists be credited at the start of the film on the grounds of asking audiences to sit through credits where they wouldn't read the long list of professionals, seems to have been the wiser course.

** Many fans see it losing the UsefulNotes/AcademyAward for Best Picture to ''Film/AnnieHall'' as this, and regard it as a case of the Academy [[SciFiGhetto looking down upon science fiction and fantasy films]]. Both are widely considered to be fantastic and influential movies though, and quite a few ''Star Wars'' fans even regard ''Annie Hall'' as [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou the one film they were okay with losing to]], given that it's about as different to the usual OscarBait films as ''A New Hope'' was.

* FirstInstallmentWins: While many feel ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' is better, the original ''Star Wars'' is widely considered the gamechanger in the film industry, kicking off UsefulNotes/TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood alongside ''Film/{{Jaws}}''. It is the most successful film in the series accounting for inflation, it had the biggest gross of the Special Edition releases, and [[MayTheFarceBeWithYou Star Wars parodies]] usually take most of their inspiration from ''A New Hope''. It also has the highest score of any of the ''Star Wars'' movies on Metacritic at 92, even beating out ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', which fans usually consider the best in the series. It won the most Oscars of any Star Wars film, winning 6, and the only time any of these movies got Best Picture and Best Director nominations. Likewise, both of Disney's Anthology films, ''Rogue One'' and ''Solo'' are in effect prequels to this film, separate from the actual prequels by Lucas, which still makes it the most important and constantly revisited film of the franchise, and the most influential.

!!Tropes that pertain to the 1987 UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem game that was developed by ''[[Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment Namco]]'' that is called ''A New Hope'' at the beginning:

!!Tropes that pertain to the 1991 UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem game by Beam Software / Creator/LucasFilm Games, also based on ''A New Hope'':

* PortingDisaster: The ''UsefulNotes/GameBoy'' port of ''Star Wars'' is noticeably inferior from the NES version. While the NES version is SoOkayItsAverage, it does have its share of glitches and flaws. The controls in the Game Boy port are much more stiff and the game is more prone to slowdown. Another flaw is that it's much harder to tell whether leaps of faith are safe or not because of the system's smaller play screen. The soundtrack is also missing several songs from the original, such as the Death Star and the flying into space/miniboss theme, resulting in it playing one song from the Death Star level to the ending of the game.

* AlternativeJokeInterpretation: During Obi-Wan's lightsaber battle with Darth Vader, he calls him "Darth" as if that was his first name. This ''was'' the writers' intention at the time, but now that we know "Darth" is a title and not a given name, some viewers interpreted this as Obi-Wan calling him that sarcastically. After ''Obi-Wan Kenobi'', it now has a more tragic meaning; Vader insists ThatManIsDead as he killed Anakin, but Obi-Wan still can't bear to call him by his new name, only acknowledging his title. Thanks to Guinness's wry delivery here, we have more layers of what [[WatsonianVersusDoylist Obi-Wan was really trying to say]] than we did forty years ago.

** There were exceptions, such as Creator/PeterCushing, who'd been in enough genre films that were also dismissed beforehand but proved successful, that he knew this would be a hit, if nothing else then with kids.

** During the Scene on the Death Star where Han and Chewie are chased by stormtroopers, most people believed that the trooper's "Close the blast doors!" line was one of the many changes made for the Special Edition in 1997. In Reality, versions of the film with this line existed as early as 1977. This was because two different sound mixes were created for the film, one in stereo and one in mono. The mono mix featured several lines of dialouge and sound effects not present in the stereo mix. "Close the blast doors!" was one of them.

** The Mos Eisley Cantina denizens. In the actual film they're basically set pieces instead of characters, but they did their job in the narrative--giving the viewer an impression of just how diverse and alien the galaxy is--so well that most of them have [[AscendedExtra received extensive backstories]] in the ''Legends'' continuity.

*** Thanks to ''Series/ObiWanKenobi'', he's now a devoted father who resents never having a chance to know his brother and who is desperate to keep his son away from his brother's life of adventure and romance, which got him killed (as far as Owen knows).

** Similarly cite Han's line "Jabba, you're a wonderful human being" being an OrphanedRefrence to Jabba originally being planned to be an human, and use it as evidence that the scene should've remained deleted. Except, Declan Mulholland was only ever intended to be a stand-in to give Creator/HarrisonFord and the modeling team a frame of refrence for Jabba’s movements, with Jabba always planned to be an alien creature. This means even when the scene was filmed back in 1976, Han was being a DeadpanSnarker with that line, rather than the continuity error fans treat it as.

** Similarly people use Han's line "Jabba, you're a wonderful human being" as evidence that the scene should've remained deleted. Except, Declan Mulholland was only ever intended to be a stand-in to give Creator/HarrisonFord somebody to interact with and Jabba was always meant to be an alien creature. This means even when the scene was filmed back in 1976, Han was being a DeadpanSnarker with that line, rather than the continuity error fans treat it as.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/MichaelBell provided the dubbed voices for Vanden Willard and Jan Dodonna years before he become known for playing various characters in ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'', ''WesternAnimation/GIJoeARealAmericanHero'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Voltron}}'', and decades before his role as Raziel in the ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'' video games.
* SeinfeldIsUnfunny:

** Multiple studios (including Creator/UniversalPictures, Creator/UnitedArtists and Creator/{{Disney}} (who ironically purchased the rights over 3 decades later)) turned the film proposal down and most of the management of Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox (which would later [[WhosLaughingNow also be purchased by Disney]]) outside of Alan Ladd Jr. thought it would be a final embarrassment before Fox closed its doors. Even the Directors Guild of America thought it was going to bomb, which was the only reason they let Creator/GeorgeLucas release it [[ValuesDissonance without any traditional opening credits]]. After the film exploded into the public consciousness, everyone else changed their tune saying this film was the kind of unorthodox creative dare that company founder, Darryl Zanuck, often won big with.

!!Tropes that pertain to the 1977 movie:

** In retrospect, Owen and Beru are a little too glib about Luke acting like, in Beru's opinion, his father. "He has too much of his father in him" should have been met with a look of horror, not a smile. This is because Luke's father wasn't intended to be Vader at this point - he really was just someone who followed the CallToAdventure by becoming a Jedi. In-universe, it can be explained that Owen and Beru almost certainly don't know that Anakin became Vader.